Embryo Adoption: What Does the Church Say?

The following was one of my last columns for the East Tennessee Catholic. I did a quick check before reprinting it here to make sure that it still accurately reflects the Church’s position on this issue.
Most of the mail attorneys receive is dry and uninteresting, as you might expect. But the brochure I pulled out of my husband’s PO Box one morning last Spring was different—it was eye-catching, all pink and spring green and adorned with butterflies and an adorable baby peeking out from under a blanket.
It was an invitation to a conference in Washington, D.C.: “Emerging Issues in Embryo Donation and Adoption.” Sponsors included the National Embryo Donation Center, Bethany Christian Services, and UT’s Graduate School of Medicine. The sessions looked fascinating, and I was particularly intrigued by one of the speakers, Father Peter F. Ryan, a Jesuit priest with an impressive array of academic credentials, who planned on “Making the Ethical Case for Embryo Donation and Adoption.”
To me it seemed like a perfect solution to the tragedy of the thousands of embryos abandoned to cryopreservation tanks after their parents “completed their families” through assisted reproductive technologies. We Catholics believe embryos are morally equivalent to born children, right? And it’s a moral good to adopt unwanted children, surely? Says the 1987 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith instruction Donum Vitae: “The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life.”
Our evangelical brethren have embraced embryo adoption. One prominent Christian adoption site has a program trademarked “Snowflakes,” a clever moniker referencing both the current condition of the embryos and their uniqueness. However, reading stories of some non-Catholic couples who have chosen embryo adoption highlights some of our theological differences since evangelicals do not object to IVF.
What is the Catholic Church’s official position?Donum Vitae was silent on the issue. A 2005 article in the Washington Post, written by Alan Cooperman, said: “[T]he debate over embryo adoptions is just beginning to take shape. ‘There are very few moral issues on which the Catholic Church has not yet taken a position. This is one,’ said Cathy Cleaver Ruse, chief spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.” The article went on to say, “One of the leading voices in the church in favor of embryo adoptions is the Rev. Thomas D. Williams, Dean of theology at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. ‘It’s reaching out to another human being, albeit in an embryonic state, in the only way that that little being can be helped.’”
Responding to the many new bioethical issues that have arisen since 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions in September 2008. It addresses the problem of frozen embryos at length: “With regard to the large number of frozen embryos already in existence the question becomes: what to do with them? . . . a grave injustice has been perpetrated . . . The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature. It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of ‘prenatal adoption’. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.”
The USCCB’s December press release does not characterize this statement as an absolute ban on embryo adoption by faithful Catholics: “The document does not reject the practice outright but warns of medical, psychological and legal problems associated with it and underscores the moral wrong of producing and freezing embryos in the first place.” The National Catholic Bioethics Center, in an article written by Director of Education Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D, concurs: “There is ongoing debate among reputable Catholic theologians about this matter, and technically it remains an open question. . . . Dignitas Personae expressed serious moral reservations . . . without, however, explicitly condemning it as immoral.”
This is yet another debate that no one saw coming back when the birth of the first test-tube baby was celebrated. The problem of the orphaned embryos underscores the intrinsic immorality of IVF. As Dignitas Personae concludes: “All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved.”The column turned out to be eerily topical as only a few months later an unmarried teacher at the Catholic high school my children attend (as did I and my mother) decided to adopt an embryo. She wrote the parents of her students a lengthy explanation of her research into the issue, which included consultation with the Bishop and the Principal of the school. A minor firestorm erupted when one family expressed their disagreement by sending an email to every parent in the school and then withdrawing their children.

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One thought on “Embryo Adoption: What Does the Church Say?”

Katy England

I read something about this. My thoughts are this: The teacher at KCHS has likely felt called to experience motherhood. It is difficult and long and expensive to adopt and even more so if you are single. She did not engage in non-marital sex. She adopted an embryo… and embryo that was created by someone else and would have ultimately been destroyed(the same thing as an abortion) Said embryo will now have a chance to grow and become a much-longed for and very loved child. I think she chose the wisest, most morally admirable decision. She committed no sin. She found a way to become a mother and save a life and I, for one, think it’s really beautiful. The family that left KCHS would have been equally mad had the teacher gotten pregnant the old-fashioned way as well.

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I feel pretty good when I read this list.~ A Grandparent’s Wisdom on Parenting ~

1. Let your child be a child. Children are not little adults.

2. Don’t have too many rules, especially when they’re little. They’re not going to remember them all anyway.

3. Pick your battles. It won’t work to make an issue out of everything your child does that you don’t like.

4. The greatest gift you can give your child besides your love is your time. Whenever possible, interrupt what you are doing to take time for them. Many things you need to do can be put off until later but many things your child does only happen once, and you don’t want to miss them.

5. Don’t micromanage your child’s behavior. It isn’t necessary (or productive in the long run) to try to control everything he or she says or does.

7. Kids get tired. When they do, it’s usually futile to try to reason with them to get them to do what you want.

8. Don’t say things to your own child that you would never dream of saying to someone else’s child.

9. Whatever stage your child is in, remember: this, too, shall pass, and they will move on to another stage. (This may be better or worse than the previous one!)

10. Don’t let mealtime become a battle zone. No child has ever starved to death yet because they didn’t eat everything on their plate.

11. Read to your child.

12. When your child starts talking, listen. What they say is important to them, and kids have great things to say.

13. Spend some time tucking your child into bed each night.

14. It’s good to find a church family to help you raise your child. You need others to support you. Your child needs to establish a good foundation of values and truth. If he or she doesn’t get this early in life, they might get it later and from someone else you may not like.

15. Take time every day to enjoy your child and relish this role God has blessed you with.

(Postscript: my dad says some of these are things he did, and some are things he wishes he’d done. ❤️) …

Timeline Photos"Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you." – Luke 14 #SundayGospel bit.ly/2ZpzEtS…

"Arsonists have set God’s Cathedral aflame. In the Amazon rainforest, home to hundreds of thousands of animal species, 40,000 plant species, and nearly a million indigenous people, fires are raging, destroying the ecological buttresses of one of the most biodiverse and important ecosystems in the world. These creatures are a testament to God’s good creation, a living, breathing cathedral, shaped by the evolutionary forces of God, and entrusted to human hands." …

"Baby loss is not just a story of grief, of pain and of tears, its a beautiful story of love and of celebration.

So let’s scream from the rooftops that all children matter, those that are here and those that we desperately miss."I haven’t shared this picture for quite some time so wanted to post it again this evening. These are my children…the ones that ran ahead and the ones who I get the honour to raise.

Someone said to me in an interview recently well you are the mother of two, I kindly corrected them. I am the mother of 7, just because five of my children didn’t get to grow up on the earth, doesn’t stop them from existing.

I also wanted to say this…Baby loss is not just a story of grief, of pain and of tears, its a beautiful story of love and of celebration.

So let’s scream from the rooftops that all children matter, those that are here and those that we desperately miss. ❤️

I am so unbelievably touched that SO many people have liked and shared this image, THANK You. Please feel free to also like my page and see future posts and quotes, I would love for you to become a FB friend x